


something dark is coming

by lupinely



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Nazgûl | Ringwraiths, Second Age, Third Age, War of the Ring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 07:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5699338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupinely/pseuds/lupinely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tar-Míriel meets her fate in the flooding of Númenor; but rather than her end, it proves to be her beginning as Sauron’s most loyal servant.</p>
<p>(The Witch-King of Angmar, Lord of the Nazgûl, from beginning to end.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	something dark is coming

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of Míriel as the Witch-King of Angmar comes from [Sath's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sath/pseuds/Sath) fic [Not By the Hand of Man](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5067949).

 

 

 

 

 

_"In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair._  
_In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face."_  
-The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien

 

 

 

 

They drown, all of them: every last Númenórean left on that craggy wreck of an island that once jutted proudly upwards out of the fray of the sea and now, in its end, sinks beneath the waves and is silent.

All save one.

 

-

 

Which is not to say that the water does not take her. Surf and foam and salt, and a roaring louder than anything else on Arda, louder surely than anything in existence. She chokes on salt water and it burns her throat, her lungs, but the ring on the central finger of her right hand burns ever fiercest. There is a flash of white light like the prismatic shine of a star, the only star, and then the water is not gone, but perhaps she is.

She only knows that she has been called back when she smells wet earth and blood. She rises upright on the shore of a continent to which she has never traveled, never yearned to see. Everything is mist and sea foam, herself most of all. The only place where she is clear and vivid is near the ring on her right hand: the sharp outline of her fingers is stark even in the fading sunlight, yet all else of who she once was disappears from her wrist onwards.

She reforms, but slowly. For a long time she wanders as little more than this: a small sparkle of light borne aloft, as if by a hand, a lantern against the night sky, only no one is there: just the wraithlight. Just the little candle that she has lit—that her lord has lit—in the darkness. He has given her the chance to avenge herself upon the Men of Westernesse. But, standing on the shores of this strange continent, looking westward _—(West!)—_ into the growing darkness and out over the churning, displaced sea, she thinks that there is little left now for her to do.

Though she walks far from the sea for the rest of her days—in fact, though she never returns to it again once she sets her back to it now—she tastes saltwater in the back of her throat until the end, when all else has been set to rights.

 

-

 

There are others such as she: eight others in sum, men and women and some who are neither, but in their current forms this matters little. Once kings and queens of Men, now they all bend the knee to her, and she to their lord. The call of his ring, the sole Ring that rules over them all, is too powerful and terrible to disobey, and she never thinks of trying.

Míriel, she once was called—Tar-Míriel, before she was Zimraphel, before she was disgraced and then exalted. Two hundred years she walked the earth as nothing more than a woman, as nothing less. She does not forget her name but it serves no use to her any longer. Ringwraith, they call her; Nazgûl; and later, in whispers: Witch-King. It displeases her not. They are but names, and she but a servant.

On the plains of Gorgoroth, within sight of the Morannon between the peaks of Cirith Gorgor, she wields a weapon more deadly than any ever before known on the realm of Middle-earth, for the fear her presence inspires is unspeakable and indomitable. Men and Elves alike flee before her, and when she laughs it is the sound of thunder, the earth breaking open beneath her feet.

She faces Elendil for a brief time: he stands tall, proud, unbent before her, and yet she towers over him. She wonders whether he will recognize her: they are two of the only remaining children of Númenor, and kin calls to kin, they say. Surely he suspects, or fears, or knows that among the ringwraiths walks one of his people who survived the sundering sea, who chose Sauron’s dominion out of foolishness, perhaps, or deceit. Perhaps Elendil thinks her the fallen king, Pharazôn himself, now standing before Elendil with darkness streaming from his hair.

She laughs at this. Oh, but they had all been foolish, these men and kings of Númenor. She had chosen Sauron’s service with her eyes wide open even as the roiling waters of the stormy sea had risen all around her, around them all. Not tricked, was she: not deceived. Though that would not sit well with the consciences of men as they sit around firesides in later years and tell stories of the terror she wields. And they will change her from a woman to a man in their stories as well, as if to reassure themselves that none of their wives or daughters could ever feel hatred and despair fester thus as she has: this ugly thing inside her made strong, made powerful, made lovely.

She forces Elendil back once, twice, three times, then bows before the will of her lord and lets Sauron have him. So ends the grandeur and the legacy of the Men of Westernesse, she thinks when Elendil has been struck down, and again afterwards; after her master’s retreat, when Isildur falls to ignominy and legend; and later still when the line of Númenor dwindles over millennia. She presides over its decay, the sweet slow dreadful disgrace and humiliation of a death prolonged by the unrelenting grasp of time, her greatest ally.

When her lord falls, his Ring hewn from him and his realm with it, she flees with all the other wraiths. They do not die, merely wait; time is cruel and unforgiving, and everything under the Sun fades and dies except for those in service of her lord and those in opposition to him. New powers will rise that are merely old powers cloaked new, or named otherwise: and she will be there when her master calls.

_Hide,_ he tells her—not _flee._ For he will return; he always does.

 

-

 

“What would thou ask of me,” says her lord, “in return for thy most loyal service?” 

It is not truly a question, nor a promise. She knows, and he knows, that he need give nothing in return for what he takes, and this offer is in some ways a pretense only.

But she has been loyal. And she will be, ever onwards. Perhaps even if the ring upon her right hand were sundered from her. “Thou knowest what it is that I wish.”

The dark lord sits upon his dark throne. All is quiet and stark and spare: not lavish as his realm might once have been in early days, when he still had thought to spare for extravagance and not for domination. “Yes, I know. Ever since you crawled naked out of the sea, cursing the realm of Númenor with your last breath and my ring upon your hand have I known.” He sounds amused, entertained. If she were flesh and blood, she might flush; if she had any shame left in her, rather than this certainty, this inevitability, this doom, she might even have cared.

Her lord stands and comes to kneel beside her. He is still tall, so tall in this form, though it has been an age since he has taken his true one. Even kneeling he stands over her. She bows her head, and he says, so quiet, the lull of his voice at her ear: “While I live, no living man shall take thee from my service.”

And though she later flees before the golden Elf who prophesizes her lord’s words once more in true, she knows not fear nor uncertainty ever after, unto the end of days.

 

-

 

In Carn Dûm her power grows while her lord sleeps. Quietly, slowly at first: she seeks not to draw attention to Angmar and her strength. She garbs herself in a form more solid than she has in millennia and watches from afar as the sons and daughters of Númenor, these Dúnedain, the blood of Elendil, wither and fade and all legacy of their past grandeur passes into little more than song or tale. It is sweet, so sweet to watch and preside over this. She sets the kingdoms of Cardolan, of Rhudaur, of Arthedain against each other and watches as the dwindling people of Arnor tear themselves to pieces of their own accord.

She walks never in a single form but multiple; some might call her a man from the breadth of her shoulders, others a woman from the bright of her eyes if they are unlucky enough to catch a quick glance of them, cold enough to chill bones. ‘The Witch-King of Angmar’ they call her, and it satisfies. She sees little with her waking eyes, especially in the sunlight, but she smells that which she cannot see: insolence, sometimes; fear, quite often; and blood most often of all.

Those wraiths that can answer her summons do so when she calls for them, and she sends them forth to do her bidding. In service, of course, to their lord...always in service. But they bow to her in his stead when he is gone. Sometimes she sees the coals of their eyes in the depths of their dark cloaks, where once faces would have been. Darkness streams from their shoulders as it does from her own, but sometimes she thinks she sees a flash in the eyes of one of the others, a flash that she might recognize, perhaps—but then it is gone, always gone. She knows not the origin of the other wraiths, where they came from save for that they come from all over the various realms and dying kingdoms of Middle Earth; they know not that she is the last true daughter of Númenor and that she carries that title like a malediction upon her heavy-armored shoulders, but perhaps they see her bend at the neck to carry the weight of that curse.

She dreams sometimes of a woman she may have known long ago, when she was still Míriel. If they are memories then they are poor ones, and they have not fared well the decomposition of time and her own self. The dream is nothing but smoke and systole: the pounding of her heart, or perhaps a war drum, or a drum of doom. A woman is silhouetted before her, dark of face and hair, holding a single, brilliant star in her outstretched hand, and Míriel’s lungs ache to breathe.

_Saltwater,_ she thinks, and hears the gulls of the far-off sea. She wonders, bitterly, how many centuries she must pass in deserts, in mountains, in desolate forsaken bogs before the sounds of what haunts her follow her no further.

Arnor shattered, the lonely house of Imladris left standing alone, she travels southward to Ithilien and the forgotten fortress of Minas Ithil. A place of power, of secrets: Minas Morgul suits it better. Of her fellow wraiths she knows the name of only one, Khamûl who serves as her lieutenant—and when she looks into Khamûl’s eyes (those eyes that only other wraiths can see), sometimes she is reminded of her dream of long ago. It vexes and pleases her to know that some connections, some memories, may transcend lifetimes when nothing else does.

Their lord has been a long time gone, but the lure of his call grows ever stronger as the years of this new age pass: and there is a call that is stronger still, the call of his Ring to the one that she bears upon her right hand evermore. At times she is nearly torn in two by the power of these masters: Sauron upon her heart and mind, and the Ring upon all else, all knowledge.

 

-

 

More time, time flowing like water. How prescient that she should hate them both. She sends Khamûl to search for this forgotten place her lord has heard tell of, this Shire; should Khamûl find it, then they will hunt for the Ring in earnest. But for now she must wait. She must bide her time, marshaling her power in Minas Morgul as she has ever drawn darkness and strength to herself, even before her lord’s ring came to her.

She takes the simplest of her forms when the time comes: mere shadow, cloaked in dark robes, hooded to shield the emptiness of her face from peering eyes. She sets forth with all her company in haste, in darkness, and the call of the Ring like the rising of a drum in the back of her thoughts, ever pounding.

Upon what once was Amon Sûl and is now little but a broken tower to match Elessar’s broken hilt after her siege of Arnor, she faces Olorín. She would have struck him down had not the Sun risen over the hills of the East. He flashes white and she sees his fear, his hopelessness: even in this, the greatest of beings upon Middle-earth save for her lord himself, she can hold dominion. She greets the dawn laughing for the first time in centuries, her voice sounding harsh and shrill over the surrounding land as Olorín—sometimes Gandalf, sometimes Mithrandir, sometimes nameless—flees before her.

She faces Elessar a few nights later upon the same hilltop—Elessar and four beings she had heard not word nor sign before these recent months of searching. The call of the Ring is so loud, so shrill as to be a cacophony. She is not sure which of the halflings bears that which she so desperately seeks until suddenly he is before her, wielding the Ring as if he thinks he can match her in power, match her lord—! Then he staggers backwards in terror. He can see her.

She knows it as suddenly as she had known the presence of the Ring that he bears. This halfling looks at her and sees the might and glory of Tar-Míriel before the seas swallowed her whole, the power of she who is now the Witch-King of Angmar, terrible in her wrath and soul. She is suddenly angry, furious as she has not been in so long. How dare he look upon her, how dare he see her for who she was—

Reaching for the Ring, she stabs him; the morgul blade pierces his breast, catches his breath in his throat, and he pulls away, drawing the Ring back with him. She reaches farther, still enraged, and would have smote him there upon the tower if Elessar had not returned wielding a brand of fire.

In the days afterwards she follows them with all the rest of the wraiths to the ford. She can see little here, but scent much: the stench of Elves, of Men, of the Dúnadan, of magic wielded against her and her brethren. It matters not. She urges her horse into the waterway, seeking the halfling, seeking the Ring around his neck.

When the waters come, she shrieks at the memory of saltwater, though this river bears no salt, no memory of the sea. It overpowers her and thunders over her, tossing her under its surging mass and bearing her downriver, tumbling her so that she cannot tell what is up, what is down: so loud in her ears that she thinks Númenor is drowning again and she stands upon Meneltarma watching its inundation, watching her people die.

Her fellow wraiths are scattered, their mounts destroyed by the power of the river. When she rises from the banks, little more than smoke, than memory, she hears above her the call of the sea, the crying of homesick gulls.

 

-

 

Countless lives of men she has strode this Middle-earth, this forsaken realm. Never would she once say that she has tired—wearied, perhaps. To grow old but never to feel it: it is a strange fate, and not meant for the lives of Men, woman though she was. No, she is not _tired_ —but she had never been meant to live this long, to see more than a single age of this world.

Her lord wanes without his Ring, yet he cannot die while it still endures. Would this be her fate also, she wonders, were she to remove the ring upon her right hand? To be less than a wraith, a mere shadow of her former self? And what if she were to cast her ring, her lord’s gift to her, into the mountain of fire, the very depths of Orodruin? Surely then her lord’s promise and Glorfindel’s prophecy would end: no living man may slay her, but she is not and never has been a living man.

She wonders often if that is what her end must be: ignoble and shameful to the last. If she must eventually take her own life, whether after the fall of her lord—though she dare not speak of that—or after his success has been so well achieved, so well established, that her services are needed no longer and he might set her free.

“Never,” her lord whispers when he catches a glimpse of her mind. He takes her face by the chin—for he can see her as she was, beautiful and young in the days of old, and he can take a physical form when he wishes, though not for long. His touch is cruel and painful but she expects and wants nothing less. “You shall never be parted from me, Tar-Míriel, Ar-Zimraphel, my Witch-King; and I shall never depart from this earth. We shall linger here together unto the ending of the world.”

Such is her fate.

 

-

 

In Minas Morgul, that decrepit, twisted Tower of the Moon long since bent to her will, she plans the final stages of her lord’s war. Not since her days reigning in Carn Dûm has she overseen a conflict so great as this; it has been too long, far too long, since she has commanded armies. All answer her call, and she musters her forces in the depths of Minas Morgul’s heart, lets the ancient city rule over them as surely as she herself does. She knows the power of old places, of once-sacred places: the power in desecration. More than walls and barricades have been broken and reclaimed here.

Sauron can communicate with her from across great distances through her thoughts, if he is of a mind. He gives his commands but leaves the intricacies of the upcoming battle to her. It has been more than an age since he fought in the midst of battle and bloodshed, and she has learned ways to break Men and Elves and Dwarves and all others that even he never knew. Even the greatest of the High Elves have fled before her.

Her grinding machines of war set into motion, she girds herself in darkness and the mantled crown of her title as the fell Witch-King out of Angmar, borne on black wings and the weight of fear. Then she waits for the hammerstrike to fall; and when it does, she and her fell beast take to the sky and forge the path to the glimmering fragile Tower of the Sun, waning now in the day’s deepening shadow.

Soon the Pelennor is a ruin; all yield before her, or turn and flee. Upon her terrible winged mount she rains hellfire and death from above and seeks the ruin of this ancient city, Minas Tirith: this last testament to the legacy and memory of Númenor. She sees Olorín again, white now in truth, and she faces him once more. This time fire is her weapon, dancing along the blade of her sword. She will not bow before another—before any but her master.

She fights in the sky and she fights within the city itself, never quite landing and touching ground but reaching out with fell hands from where she sits upon her beastly steed and lifting soldiers—small Men, so much smaller than she now, she who has grown in darkness—by their necks and flinging them over the city’s parapets to their deaths. They are all so easily broken, these soldiers of Gondor, and she breaks them as she would any other, with hardly a thought for the long-ago time when she faced Elendil and his people upon the fields of Gorgoroth. In those days she strove with mighty warriors, disgraced as they may have been: there is no strength left in Middle-earth that has the power to defy her or her master. That this war has gone on this long speaks to desperation, not might or will.

The king of Rohan writhes between the teeth of her fell beast and then lies broken beneath the heavy weight of his dying horse. The battle is nearly over, and the arrival of the Rohirrim had not been enough to stay the might of Mordor. She lets her fell beast bend to feed, and that is when the shieldmaiden—instantly recognizable to her, to the Witch-King, to she who was Tar-Míriel, as a woman though this maiden has disguised herself—steps between the Nazgûl and her prey.

The shieldmaiden’s voice is thin and high upon the air, the sounds of battle and death and bloodshed the background to her futile cry. She hews the head from the fell beast, but that is of no matter. The Witch-King of Angmar steps from her dying mount and holds out her weapons, sword and flail both. The shieldmaiden trembles in fear, and the Witch-King advances upon her.

No living man is this shieldmaiden: and she might have felt fear at that once, long ago. But fear is her weapon, the one she has wielded the most often and the surest, and it can not be turned against her, not even now. Not even when the halfling—not the one from Amon Sûl but one of his companions—drives his biting dagger of the Westernesse into her back from behind, and she staggers.

The shieldmaiden stands upright before her: her eyes bright, her long golden hair streaming free now in the wind. One broken arm is clutched to her side but her other is strong and held high with sword in hand. She is beautiful and merciless, and Míriel—for Míriel she remains, even after all this long, long time—is envious, and proud, and wholly unafraid.

How fitting, she thinks just before the end. No man in Arda ever had the strength or ability to destroy her. Not Ar-Pharazôn, not Elendil, not any of the Men or Elves who came after. And as she falls before the shieldmaiden and the halfling, she wonders if she will, upon dying, go to whence mankind’s Doom takes all of the race of Men—or if in her service to her lord she has forsaken even that.

_We shall linger here together unto the ending of the world._ So her lord had promised.

Not quite, she thinks: and then she knows nothing but silence; and the passing of time, faithless and unrelenting, fades with all the sounds of the distant sapphire sea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
